No idea. Although I have external FW drives and a MBP, I had not had the time to perform any test. If you have a MBP with a FW800 connector, then it might be the way to go. Try to google for performance tests. [a href=\"http://xlr8yourmac.com/]Xlr8yourmac[/url] and Bare Feats may have relevant tests.

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Francois

DarkPenguin

I thought the reason to go with FW over USB was FW required less system overhead. (So while your disks might transfer at the same rate your cpu might be working harder to do it. I've no idea if that matters with the speed of todays cpus or not.)

usb is superslow compared to FW..even 400....FW800 is by far your best choice...most enclosures out now offer all 3 anyway...check out otherworldcomputing for drives and barefeats.com for speedtests....

The throughput numbers would lead you to believe that USB 2.0 provides better performance. But, differences in the architecture of the two interfaces have a huge impact on the actual sustained "real world" throughput. And for those seeking high-performance, sustained throughput is what it's all about (reading and writing files to an external hard drive for example).

Architecture - FireWire vs. USB 2.0

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FireWire, built from the ground up for speed, uses a "Peer-to-Peer" architecture in which the peripherals are intelligent and can negotiate bus conflicts to determine which device can best control a data transfer

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USB 2.0 uses a "Master-Slave" architecture in which the computer handles all arbitration functions and dictates data flow to, from and between the attached peripherals (adding additional system overhead and resulting in slower, less-efficient data flow control)

FireWire - Still the Performance King!As the performance comparison shown above confirms, FireWire remains the performance leader. And is the best choice for DV camcorders, digital audio and video devices, external hard drives, high-performance DVD burners and any other device that demands continuous high performance throughput.

Yes, certain devices but my experience hasn't been good in this respect unless you've got a powered hub. With FireWire, not an issue.

Another thing to consider is stability. I know nothing about the numbers (and don't really care ), but from a purely subjective viewpoint I find that Firewire is far less prone to issues such as interference with power-saving (sleep) than is USB. I have a Firewire 800 Mercury Elite Pro drive from Otherworld Computing, and am very happy with it. Previous drives and other devices connected via USB hubs had endless issues with waking my Mac from sleep and preventing it going to sleep, and were subjectively much slower and "clunkier".